Discussing the potential effectiveness of plasma railguns
Dec 1, 2016 23:24:29 GMT
apophys, Durandal, and 2 more like this
Post by themohawkninja on Dec 1, 2016 23:24:29 GMT
So, I was doing some research into the coilguns and railguns that we see in-game, and happened to come across something very interesting, the plasma armature railgun, a.k.a. the plasma railgun [1]. In short (from what I have come to understand), all a plasma railgun is, is a railgun that instead of firing a solid armature, it uses a solid armature to generate an extremely high velocity plasma toroid (or "jet" as described in the scholarly articles, so perhaps there are different projectile geometries?).
Initial research led me to a USAF research project on plasma railguns known as the Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultrahigh Directed Energy and Radiation, otherwise known as MARAUDER [2]. From what I have gathered, the weapon was able to fire a 0.5-2 milligram toroid of plasma in the megameter range, resulting in around 5 megajoules of energy at the target (~1.2x energy released by detonating one kilogram of TNT), resulting in "extreme mechanical and thermal shockâ on the target [2][3]. The solid bases for the plasma seem to range wildly from polycarbonate cubes to aluminum foil, to solid hydrogen pellets, or hydrogen and copper (possible hydrogen gas in copper pellet?) [4][5][6][7]. The temperatures in the plasma have been measured to be around 24,000 degrees Kelvin, with the "tail" of the jet still being around 8,500 degrees Kelvin [7]. The plasma can be made to be possible extremely dense (1017 g(?) cm-3) (no mass dimension is cited, but it may be a typo. I would assume grams) [8].
Pretty much everything in those articles is way out of my realm of knowledge, so this might all sound terribly absurd to any actual engineers or physicists out there, but the only real concerns that I have noticed is that (A) the Wikipedia page for plasma railguns states that "accelerator electrode geometry and materials are also open areas of research" which could imply that the effects of different geometries and materials isn't well known, which would be a major issue to implementing it in CoaDE. In addition, I am concerned about the dissipation of a plasma in vacuum. 200km/s (as is stated in [8]) might be a very high velocity and would surely result in extreme engagement ranges in-game if it were a normal solid projectile, but if the plasma dissipates to harmless temperatures and pressures in sub-second time frames, that would seriously limit the range.
That being said, what interests me about implementing this in-game on a practical level is that railguns are already well-implemented in-game, and so is plasma damage, so it seems like much of the work for the weapon has already been done. It's "just" a matter of understanding the relationships between material choices, geometries, and the resulting muzzle velocities.
Sources:
1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_railgun
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARAUDER
3. web.archive.org/web/20070223040553/http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/163_ballsoffire.shtml (original citation link broken)
4. repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/32991/PN_154_Weeks_IEEE.pdf?sequence=1
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Star (original link results in 404 error)
6. www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/397353
7. ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/108436/
8. scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/rsi/80/8/10.1063/1.3202136
Initial research led me to a USAF research project on plasma railguns known as the Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultrahigh Directed Energy and Radiation, otherwise known as MARAUDER [2]. From what I have gathered, the weapon was able to fire a 0.5-2 milligram toroid of plasma in the megameter range, resulting in around 5 megajoules of energy at the target (~1.2x energy released by detonating one kilogram of TNT), resulting in "extreme mechanical and thermal shockâ on the target [2][3]. The solid bases for the plasma seem to range wildly from polycarbonate cubes to aluminum foil, to solid hydrogen pellets, or hydrogen and copper (possible hydrogen gas in copper pellet?) [4][5][6][7]. The temperatures in the plasma have been measured to be around 24,000 degrees Kelvin, with the "tail" of the jet still being around 8,500 degrees Kelvin [7]. The plasma can be made to be possible extremely dense (1017 g(?) cm-3) (no mass dimension is cited, but it may be a typo. I would assume grams) [8].
Pretty much everything in those articles is way out of my realm of knowledge, so this might all sound terribly absurd to any actual engineers or physicists out there, but the only real concerns that I have noticed is that (A) the Wikipedia page for plasma railguns states that "accelerator electrode geometry and materials are also open areas of research" which could imply that the effects of different geometries and materials isn't well known, which would be a major issue to implementing it in CoaDE. In addition, I am concerned about the dissipation of a plasma in vacuum. 200km/s (as is stated in [8]) might be a very high velocity and would surely result in extreme engagement ranges in-game if it were a normal solid projectile, but if the plasma dissipates to harmless temperatures and pressures in sub-second time frames, that would seriously limit the range.
That being said, what interests me about implementing this in-game on a practical level is that railguns are already well-implemented in-game, and so is plasma damage, so it seems like much of the work for the weapon has already been done. It's "just" a matter of understanding the relationships between material choices, geometries, and the resulting muzzle velocities.
Sources:
1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_railgun
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARAUDER
3. web.archive.org/web/20070223040553/http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/163_ballsoffire.shtml (original citation link broken)
4. repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/32991/PN_154_Weeks_IEEE.pdf?sequence=1
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Star (original link results in 404 error)
6. www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/397353
7. ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/108436/
8. scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/rsi/80/8/10.1063/1.3202136
